You can travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for customer-centric cultures.

Some customers want to use you. None of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you. None of them want to be abused.

Thanks to Annie Lennox, of the Eurythmics, for getting me to think about customer-centric cultures in a way that we all can relate to. Over the past several years I am mind-blown at how many organizations are on the quest to create more customer-centric workplace cultures.

Everybody is looking for it

I spend a lot of my life working with customer experience and contact center leaders. I participate in various events with different associations. Two of my most active associations Continue reading →

Do you ever find yourself looking to various sports for examples that you can use to improve employee engagement? Have you ever stopped to ask why there are coaches and teams that are consistently at the top? Have you wondered why these programs produce leaders that go to create other winning teams? I find myself looking to emulate great coaches (leaders) all of the time.

There surely is a long list of winners to study. Here in my home state of North Carolina we have college basketball programs like Duke University that have a tradition of winning that goes back several decades.

Coach K is More than a Winner

At Duke University, Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) he has been the head men’s basketball coach since 1980. Coach K has led the Duke University Blue Devils to four NCAA Championships, 11 Final Fours, 12 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) regular season titles, and 13 ACC Tournament championships. Coach K is also the coach of the United States men’s national basketball team that has won two gold medals. Coach K is the winningest coach in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history.

Not only has Coach K lead winning teams, he has also developed a long list of successful leaders as well. Continue reading →

Why is it employees want consequences placed on others that they wouldn’t place on themselves?

It is very typical that people ask me what my opinion is about certain real-life and hypothetical situations in order to extract my opinion. The other day I was conducting a business briefing and was asked how I would respond to a real situation that my questioner Mark experienced. Continue reading →

There have been times when I have entered a workplace and just felt the weight of the emotional tension. The air was so thick that it was hard to breathe despite it being a smoke free environment. When you looked around you could see the employees walking around on tip toes with their shoulders slumped over.

The first time I walked into a place and felt this, my first assumption was the leader must be a tyrant. While that is a very understandable assumption to make, after investigation I found this was not the case. Actually the manager was a nice Continue reading →

To me gifts are special things for which I am grateful. It has nothing to do with physical items or monetary value. Gifts are things that I feel have enriched my life. Do you think the same way? I don’t think we are strange because we think this way. I have met many people in my life that have expressed the same sentiment. Have you?

Think about your workplace for a moment. Do the employees communicate positively with one another? Are they gladly working together? Do they care about each other and your business? Are they finding the greater sense of purpose and meaning they so desire? Are the results of your business exceeding your expectations?

In a Harvard Business Review article, The Cure for Horrible Bosses by Rosabeth M. Kanter she talks about the dark comedy film Horrible Bossesand how you can neutralize a bad boss. She states as many as half of American workers feel low levels of employee engagement stem from poor management.

To explain how to overcome the affects of a bad boss she talks about a character Pierre that was placed into a low performing subsidiary as a COO. In the organization, the CEO was an imperialistic and antagonistic boss that immediately resented Pierre’s presence. After a bout of depression, Pierre then sets out to build relationships in the organization. The relationships that Pierre creates over the next several weeks eventually renders the toxic CEO powerless. Continue reading →

For the longest time the Cleaver’s, in the popular 1950’s television show “Leave it to Beaver” was represented as the ideal American family.

June and Ward (Cleaver) were conscience parents that viewed their responsibility for instilling values to their boys (Wally and Beaver) as an duty to the world. They did’t use force or intimidate to teach the boys lessons but used verbal communication and leading by example as the methods.

June Cleaver had a very calm demeanor while she protected the boys from bad influences like Eddie Haskell. Ward Cleaver consistently supervised the behavior and moral education of the boys with a quiet dignity full of understanding.

What happens when your needs aren’t met? Can you recognize this in yourself? What about in others? A valuable outcome of the Systematic Leadership process inherent in the Beyond Morale program is the ability to better understand what your needs are and the needs of others. Why is this important? Continue reading →

We all know what is feels like to be a member of a great team. Even if you only experienced it for a short time, you know how fantastic it feels to have strong relationships at work, be stress free, confident, fulfilled, optimistic, and full of gratitude to be a member of a winner. When you feel like you are part of a great team your employee engagement is high. Continue reading →

Saying your people are your greatest asset is a very nice marketing statement. But would your integrity be questioned because there is no sustainable application to make it happen. The truth is, people aren’t your greatest asset, unless they’re provided guidance on how to build stronger relationships at work. When relationships at work are strong employees perform better as individuals and in teams.

Decades of research prove that individuals and teams that get along dramatically outperform those who don’t in almost every important business metric. In fact, the single most cited reason (80%) why people leave their job is because of poor relationships at work. Individuals who have stronger relationships at work substantially outperform individuals who don’t, they’re more productive, more profitable, more innovative, have less accidents, contribute more…and on and on.